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Agriculture make-or-break issue for success of Doha round
New Delhi, July 07: Describing agriculture as the make-or-break issue for successful conclusion of Doha round of WTO negotiations, developing countries including India have stressed on the importance of convergence of views on special products, special safeguard measures mechanism for developing countries and issue of subsidy in area of agriculture.
New Delhi, July 07: Describing agriculture as the make-or-break issue for successful conclusion of Doha round of WTO negotiations, developing countries including India have stressed on the importance of convergence of views on special products, special safeguard measures mechanism for developing countries and issue of subsidy in area of agriculture.
"Agriculture is the make or break issue for the successful conclusion of the Doha round of trade negotiations. However, the time is running out without a major breakthrough on the modalities of future trade liberalisation that WTO members have to agree on at the fifth WTO ministerial at Cancun," the meeting under the aegis of Government of India, UNCTAD-DFID project noted.
They agreed that Special Products (SP) and Special Safeguard Mechanisms (SSM) could provide developing countries with the much needed flexibility to address their development concerns, an official statement said here today.
Countries which deliberated on how best to ensure that the negotiations in WTO result in the modalities for future agricultural lberalisation said that the issue of export competitiveness was equally important as also the issue of the elimination of subsidies as high level of subsidies affected the viability of their domestic markets.
This was particularly so as majority of them would have no recourse to measures apart from border measures or tariff to support their farmers.
Noting that while concepts of SP and SSM in Harbinson's draft were good, their problem was that the draft leaving the actual design of SP and SSM modalities open to later technical consultations.
Bureau Report
They agreed that Special Products (SP) and Special Safeguard Mechanisms (SSM) could provide developing countries with the much needed flexibility to address their development concerns, an official statement said here today.
Countries which deliberated on how best to ensure that the negotiations in WTO result in the modalities for future agricultural lberalisation said that the issue of export competitiveness was equally important as also the issue of the elimination of subsidies as high level of subsidies affected the viability of their domestic markets.
This was particularly so as majority of them would have no recourse to measures apart from border measures or tariff to support their farmers.
Noting that while concepts of SP and SSM in Harbinson's draft were good, their problem was that the draft leaving the actual design of SP and SSM modalities open to later technical consultations.
Bureau Report